| rodney,
Kinda surprise you use UVa as a counter example. The admission practices at UVa are very similiar to Michigan's ... without the rolling admission.
For UVa, you have to submit before Jan 2 and you won't get an answer until April 1. Even if you submit early in Oct or Nov, you still won't hear back until April 1. You get no indication from the university in between. Nobody complains about that as you know going in that's the way it's gonna be. Expection is managed.
Despite UVa being somewhat more selective, the stats are about the same (UVa: 1220-1420 88% top 10; Michigan: 1210-1420 90% top 10).
UVa only releases the admission rates for in-state and OOS but not the stats. The only thing you know is that for in-state: out of 7090 applied, 47% were admitted; whereas for OOS: 10708 applied and 27% were admitted. From this, you can only deduce that OOS is more competitive ... but you don't know for sure what kinda of stats will get you in the ballpark.
And what do you know about Michigan? You know that there were about 45% more applications from OOS for half the spots. Wouldn't you expect OOS admission to be far more competitive?
About Michigan putting too many people on waitlist. Guess what... out of 17798 applicants, UVa admitted 6273(35%) and put 4130(23%) on the waitlist.
So ask yourself this question - why would you be better off with UVa? |